Programmatic Is Dead, Long Live The Programmable Age

Starship Technologies' electric-powered robots aim to make the local delivery of goods free. Photographer: Peti Kollanyi/Bloomberg

Recently, the influential AP Stylebook decreed that “internet” should no longer be capitalized. This decision was not merely an acknowledgement that digital channels are poised to subsume most traditional media formats – from television and film to radio and print. It reflected a broader understanding that the internet isn’t just one thing, but rather, “part of the neutral universe of life,” as Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, argues.

I’ve been working in the internet industry my entire adult life – actually, even longer than that. When I was in high school, I started a web design company that was one of the first of its kind on the west coast. That venture was pretty successful. Immediately after graduating college, my classmates and I launched one of the entertainment industry’s first e-ticket companies. That venture was less successful. But I stuck with the internet. It’s been my career and my passion.

Until very recently, “the Internet” meant email and desktop web browsers. Today, it means music and video streaming. Machine learning. Interactive gaming. The “Internet of Things.” GPS. Real-time data analytics. The cloud. Cognitive software. Virtual reality. Chat. If this reality seems overwhelming, it is. But it also opens the door to richer levels of experience and engagement. The technology channels that once separated work and leisure, or consumption and production, are interconnected as never before.

In short, the internet has reached an inflection point.

We’re moving from the “Programmatic Age” of its infancy to the “Programmable Age” of its future. The programmatic internet was built for the one-channel world of desktop web browsers and email; it automated the delivery of information, allowing you to post (to a web page) or send (via email) text and images, but little else. The programmatic internet was better than nothing, but it was clunky, inefficient, slow, and limited. The programmable internet is the very opposite: seamless, efficient, quick, hyper-intelligent, and infinite in its possibilities.

For anyone who relies on the digital economy to earn a living, access information and entertainment, or organize a household or business – which is to say, pretty much everyone, everywhere – this is good news. As we consign the Programmatic Age to the annals of history, it’s time to usher in the new Programmable Age.

Here are its four pillars.

Pillar #1: Data Economy

In the Programmatic Age, data was fragmented, cautiously guarded, and of limited utility. It was possible to tailor products to large segments of people, but mostly impossible to customize or personalize products for individuals. Moreover, the exchange between technology platforms and consumers was single-channel and non-dynamic in nature. Your e-commerce vendor wasn’t talking to your music or video streaming vendor (for such things scarcely existed!), which in turn was not talking to your favorite newspaper, your grocery store, or the federal government’s weather satellites.

The programmable internet in many ways enhances our lives. It also requires a vigilant approach to privacy and security. One of the great questions of the Programmable Age is how we balance the economic, political, and cultural benefits of data-driven decisioning with the timeless interest of individuals in safeguarding their autonomy.

Pillar #2: Deep Learning

It’s one thing to customize user experience and engagement, or to place different internet products in conversation with each other. But you still need the tools to do so at scale, and the scale at which the internet operates requires deep learning.

In the Programmatic Age, automated memory and learning were shallow. In the Programmable age, deep learning (or machine learning) powers the replication of human intelligence and insight on a scale that no one person or team of persons can achieve in real time.

Through deep learning, even formerly one-dimensional landing sites are now customizable. Consumers see a different Bing – a different Amazon.com – a different MSN, depending on who they are. In turn, this data-driven customization fundamentally changes the way in which information is transmitted and consumed.

In my own field – marketing technology – deep learning is changing the very way that brands interact with consumers. Marketers will soon be able to build customized algorithms that inform smart “decisioning” – not just about when (what time, what frequency, what pacing) or where (what screen, what geography, what format, what channel) to deliver creative, but what creative to deliver. With programmable creative (aka “smart creative”), an end user opening an iPhone app on a sunny day in San Francisco may see an ad against the backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge at noon, whereas at the same hour, a consumer in Paris might see the same ad against the silhouette of an illuminated Eiffel Tower at dusk. And when particular creative components inspire higher response rates than others, the system will automatically adjust the static, video, or audio ad. That’s mostly tomorrow’s vision, not today’s reality – but it’s coming.

Machine learning has infinite use cases. It also poses unique challenges. When automated intelligence stifles rather than enhances human creativity, it butts up against our most natural inclinations toward self-expression and discovery.

Pillar #3: Frictionless Supply Chains, Radical Transparency

The programmatic internet was in many ways an extension of existing commercial and economic arrangements. It told you what products were available, what they cost, and where to find them. The programmable internet, on the other hand, has compressed the supply chain for goods and services and replaced often opaque transactions with transparent ones.

Take, for instance, popular e-payment apps like Venmo, which allow consumers to bypass third-party credit card vendors and ATMs, as well as time-consuming bank transfer processes (and associated fees). Or digital marketplaces like Etsy that enable a direct exchange between producers and consumers, thus removing wholesale and retail layers in between. Or digital auction houses like Priceline that have replaced travel agencies and empowered customers and hotel owners to name the price they are willing to pay or accept. Or, most famously, sharing-economy apps like Uber and Lyft, which have disrupted the taxi industry’s arcane and arguably inefficient supply and demand practices.

If programmable has simplified commercial supply chains, it’s also compressed the internet’s own supply chain. Cloud computing has enabled real-time software updates, modular use of enterprise platforms, scalable solutions for new and growing businesses, and offsite data hosting. These capabilities are all hallmarks of the Programmable Age.

Pillar #4: Growth Hacking

When he coined the phrase in 2010, entrepreneur and startup adviser Sean Ellis stipulated that “a growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.” Think of the idea in brick and mortar terms. After the introduction of the telegraph in the nineteenth century, growth hackers developed wire services and commodity tickers that in turn drove further economic expansion. Or think about a more recent example.

In short, growth hacking is a venerable tradition that relies on open ecosystems and enterprising minds. It’s a concept deeply engrained in our programmable future.

Growth hacking is a key component of the Programmable Age. It requires an open ecosystem – namely, platforms with open APIs that foster innovation rather than preclude it. Already, we see a dynamic ecosystem of intelligent service providers that accelerate time to innovation and differentiation by rapidly productizing new offerings and, ultimately, opening up new revenue streams. Shazam identifies the song you heard on Pandora and delivers you seamlessly to iTunes. Twitter and Yelp open their APIs for Sprinkler, which in turn plugs into enterprise client and content systems.

One innovation begets the other – something only possible in the dynamic Programmable Age.

It’s not always easy to perceive a tectonic shift when you’re living through it. But all the signs point in one inevitable direction.

The Programmatic Age of Netscape and Eudora (a once-popular email application, for those readers too young to remember it) – an era of static text and creative, limited data and shallow learning – has given way to the Programmable Age. Its course and limits are still unfathomable, but already, we see its imprint in almost every corner of our economy and culture.